Anna-Maija PuroilaUniversity of Oulu · Department of Educational Sciences and Teacher Education
Anna-Maija Puroila
PhD, Adjunct Professor
About
48
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616
Citations
Citations since 2017
Publications
Publications (48)
This study uses frame of boundary work to explore university teacher educators’ discourses of the early childhood teacher education practicum and to identify the complexities of their positions(s) in these discourses. Data were obtained through focus group interviews with university teacher educators (N = 16) from two Finnish universities and analy...
European quality framework for early childhood education and care calls for creating environments that support all children’s sense of belonging. This study aims to advance empirical knowledge on educators’ interpretations of children’s belonging in early education settings. The study is part of a project conducted in five European countries – Finl...
This study focuses on early childhood teachers’ narrative identities in the North, based on the concept of narrative identities in place. The aim of the study is to deepen understanding of early childhood teachers’ work in the culturally diverse North by approaching the teachers’ narrative identities as closely connected with place. The research qu...
The study focused on cooperative teachers' views on supervision in Finnish early childhood teacher education practicums. A total of 111 cooperative teachers responded to surveys and 18 teachers participated in pair or group discussions. The findings revealed that Finnish cooperative teachers represent different professional generations and are diff...
The study draws on a relational and intersectional approach to young children’s belonging in Finnish educational settings. Belonging is conceptualized as a multilevel, dynamic, and relationally constructed phenomenon. The aim of the study is to explore how children’s belonging is shaped in the intersections between macro-, meso-, and micro-levels o...
This article focuses on children’s perspectives of belonging to a place, in this case a Finnish preprimary school setting. This study explores “place-belonging” in photographs originally taken by the children in their preprimary school activities. “Photo-telling” was applied as a methodology to link narrative and visual approaches. The research dat...
This study presents a contemporary overview of practicums as a key element in research on early childhood teacher education (ECTE). Based on a semi-systematic literature review, this study asked what kind of research informs practicums and how. The search identified 81 articles in peer-reviewed journals, which were categorised and thematically anal...
Children’s agency accords with the principles emphasised by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations in Convention on the rights of the child. UN Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Geneva. Retrieved from, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CRC.aspx, 1989). This study focuses on children’s opportu...
Young children have largely been neglected in narrative identity research. This chapter is based on the premise that identity construction is a process that begins in the early years and is formed through the everyday narratives that comprise the daily interactions through which identities are constructed, negotiated, and performed. These everyday...
The study focuses on teachers’ and children’s shared moments of joy in early childhood education settings and contributes new knowledge in educational research by exploring joy as a relational rather than an individual phenomenon. The theoretical and methodological framework draws on a narrative approach and Martin Buber’s dialogical philosophy. Da...
This study addresses leadership enactment in the context of early childhood education and care centres in Finland. The study was implemented at a time when the early childhood education and care legislation had changed. The research draws from relational leadership theory to address the following questions: How do leaders, practitioners and parents...
Action research is a methodology that has been increasing in educational studies in recent years. Previous studies have revealed that action research affects practitioners more than traditional methods, since the practitioners are not only participants but also researchers themselves. One branch of action research is collaborative action research (...
This book is about values education in early years’ settings. Communication of
values in a broad and diverse sense is central in any pedagogy, especially for the
youngest children in the educational system. Still, values education has been
neglected as a research field, in education in general and particularly in the early
years. Values educati...
Drawing on previous international research and a Nordic research project, this chapter focuses on the theoretical and conceptual approaches to values education in early childhood education contexts. The aim is twofold: to map the research field of values education as a background for the studies presented in this volume and to extract from the Nord...
This book addresses the field of values education in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. In a globalizing world, and especially in an age of pluralism, the acknowledgment of values has become increasingly important. A genuine pluralistic community requires institutions and open spaces for a multiplicity of values to be pronounced an...
This chapter draws from a research project within which researchers from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden investigated values education in Nordic preschools. The project was based on an interpretive methodology in which knowledge was co-constructed with educators and within a cross-national research team rather than drawn from direct c...
This chapter examines conflicting values in a study on educators’ talk about everyday practices in preschool. The aim of the study is to identify how different values create meaning regarding efficiency in educators’ conversations about everyday practices with children in the cloakroom. The research questions are as follows: How does the discourse...
This chapter draws on Norwegian and Finnish studies that were a part of a Nordic project on values education in preschools. In both contexts, narratives were combined with a participatory action research methodology. Narratives were employed to inspire reflection, contribute to new knowledge, and enable educators to share experiences about their wo...
This study is part of a research project exploring values education in Nordic preschools. The study approaches the value of belonging from a relational perspective with the aim of deepening our understanding of how the politics of belonging emerges in children’s play situations in Finnish preschools. The politics of belonging refers to the processe...
Drawing on a Nordic action research project on values education, this chapter describes a developmental process in one Finnish preschool. The educators worked two years with researchers in order to promote the realisation of caring values and ended up with a practice called “armchair pedagogy”. Armchair pedagogy offers concrete means that enable em...
Varhaiskasvatuksen lainsäädäntö on muuttunut viime vuosina useampaan kertaan. Varhaiskasvatuslain säätämisen yhteydessä eduskunta edellytti, että hallitus seuraa lainsäädännön muutosten vaikutuksia. Valtioneuvoston toimeksiannon mukaisesti Oulun yliopiston tekemässä selvityksessä kartoitettiin varhaiskasvatuksen lainsäädäntöön vuosina 2015 ja 2016...
This book is about values education in early years settings and discusses theory and concepts, as well as methodological and empirical perspectives. It explores issues such as the kinds of values that are communicated between educators and children and the kind of future citizens we foster in early childhood settings. It illustrates by way of cases...
Artikkelissa tarkastellaan lasten ilon hetkiä päiväkotiarjessa. Tutkimuksen kohteena ei ole ilon tunne yksilöllisenä kokemuksena vaan ihmisten välisissä suhteissa elävänä ja rakentuvana ilmiönä. Teoreettisia ja menetelmällisiä työkaluja ilon tutkimiseen haetaan Erwin Goffmanin kehysanalyysistä, Martin Buberin dialogisuusfilosofiasta ja kerronnallis...
This article employs a narrative approach to explore educators’ moral functioning in Finnish preschools. Our study is theoretically inspired by notions drawn from feminist and sociocultural studies, according to which education is understood as an entirely moral phenomenon. Within a holistic framework, moral functioning is understood as a concept t...
TIIVISTELMÄ: Artikkelissa tarkastellaan yhteenkuuluvuutta (belonging) päiväkodin ohikiitävässä hetkessä. Yhteenkuuluvuuden ymmärretään toteutuvan varhaiskasvatuksessa monimutkaisessa rakennelmassa, johon kuuluvat ihmiset, paikat, toiminta ja sen tarkoitukset (Stratigos, 2015). Aineistona on videotallenne, joka on kuvattu päiväkodin käytävässä patja...
Full text: http://norden.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1093973&dswid=8919
Kouluun liittyvää keskustelua käydään usein aikuisten kesken. Lasten näkemykset koulun arjesta ovat jääneet vähemmälle huomiolle. Tämän artikkelin keskiössä ovat lasten suunnittelemat ja toteuttamat, kouluympäristöön liittyvät pöytäteatteriesitykset. Tutkimuksen kohteena on, millaisia merkityksiä lapset liittävät koulun arkeen. Artikkelissa pohdita...
This study focuses on rights and gender in educator and child interactions in Nordic preschools. The research questions are as follows: What kinds of rights are communicated in the interactions and how? What kind of gender patterns can be identified? Rights refer to entitlements related to the early childhood education context, given or claimed by...
This study explored how practitioners interpreted educational practices from the perspective of values in Nordic preschools. Drawing data from group interviews in five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden), practitioners reflected on an observational episode about children dressing for outdoor play in a Swedish preschool....
This article explores a photography project that was implemented with two groups of children in Finnish day care centres. The aim of the project was to learn about children’s experiences of their daily lives in day care. Based on the premises of recent visual and narrative research with children, we approached the children’s photography process in...
The aim of the study is to explore how Nordic Early Childhood Education and Care policies frame values education in preschools with a special focus on the values of democracy, caring and competence. The study is part of a larger Nordic project, Values education in Nordic preschools: Basis of education for tomorrow, the aim of which is to explore va...
In this article, I approach day care centers as stages upon which various small stories are constructed and performed by young children and other interlocutors. The aim of the article is two-fold. Methodologically, the paper is a tentative application of Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective onto narrative research with children. Empirically,...
With the aim of deepening understanding of young children’s identity construction, the study explores small stories produced in a Finnish day care center context. Small stories are understood as identity-constituting social practices that occur and recur in day care settings. Taking ideas on narrative ethnography as starting point, research materia...
Whereas research on children’s well-being in education has largely focused on adult perspectives rather than on children’s understandings, recent scholarship argues for a stronger focus on children’s experience and perceptions of their own well-being. Adopting a narrative approach, this article puts children’s stories centre stage as we explore a p...
Artikkeli kohdistuu lasten hyvinvointiin päiväkotikontekstissa. Ymmärrämme hyvinvoinnin lasten arjessa sosiaalisesti rakentuvina kertomuksina. Olemme kiinnostuneita sekä kerronnan prosessista että kertomusten sisällöistä: Miten lapset kertovat hyvinvoinnistaan? Mitä lapset kertovat hyvinvoinnistaan? Tutkimusaineistoa koottiin kolmessa päiväkotiryhm...
The aim of this study is to answer the following question: what do children tell about their well-being in Finnish day care centres? The theoretical and methodological framework of this study is based on a narrative approach. The research material was collected by participating in the everyday life of three groups of children and listening to their...
The article attempts to answer the question: What is the nature of children’s everyday narratives in a day care centre context? The theoretical framework of this study is based on a narrative approach. The research material was gathered through applying the methodology of narrative ethnography. The article is based on observational material collect...
Abstract: Everyday encounters in day care centres. Diss. -- Oulun yliopisto.
Projects
Projects (4)
To explore the impact of amedments to Finnish early childhood education and care lgislation in 2015 and 2016
The research project aims to deepen understanding of the institutionalized fostering of values in Nordic preschools at the theoretical, methodological, and empirical levels. The objectives and research questions are as follows:
1)To deepen theoretical understanding of values and values education by further developing Habermas' ides about life-world, system, and communicative action.
2)To develop innovative research methodologies in which a participative action research method is connected with cross-cultural orientation;
3)To advance empirical knowledge of values and values education in Nordic preschools.
-How do the national educational policies frame values education in preschools?
-What is values education like in preschools?
-What kinds of values are communicated?
-What kinds of gender patterns emerge in values education?
-Which commonalities and variations in values and values education can be found among the Nordic countries?
